Christopher Shays calls for the creation of a National Public Service Academy
Christopher Shays calls for the creation of a National Public Service Academy
In a press conference with Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Arlen Specter, R-Penn., Shays will propose legislation commissioning the U.S. Public Service Academy. The institution would offer a free college education for young people who agree to five years of public service. "Just like we have military academies to create military leaders, we'd like to have an academy of public service [for people who] have devoted their education to this concept," Shays said in an interview. The academy would prepare young Americans for public service positions in fields including education, the environment, health care, foreign policy and law enforcement. Academy students would earn four-year bachelors of arts or bachelors of science degrees. Unique programs proposed include a mandatory junior year abroad and summer learning programs focusing on emergency response or military training. Congressman Chris Shays of Connecticut served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Fiji in the 1960's. Read more.
Stephen Barr writes: A Push to Create a Fresh Class of Public Servants
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and
Reps. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) and Christopher Shays (R-Conn.)
re-introduced legislation to create a U.S. Public Service Academy. A
version introduced last September was too late for any congressional
action, but Clinton and Shays promised to try to get the votes for
passage this year. Chris Myers Asch and Shawn Raymond, who served in
AmeriCorps together in Mississippi, came up with the idea for the
academy after seeing friends shy away from government careers because
of school debts or because they could not see themselves working in a
large bureaucracy. "We are not getting people to come into public
service," Moran said, in part because the cost of higher education
steers young people to more lucrative jobs in the private sector. Moran
said the academy is urgently needed because it would help fill staffing
gaps in agencies created over the next decade as more federal employees
retire. Read more.
Pitching a Public Service Academy
When Shawn Raymond and Chris Myers Asch finished their two-year Teach For America assignments, they weren’t ready to leave public education behind. With little capital and lofty aspirations, the two started the nonprofit Sunflower County Freedom Project, which provides after-school mentoring and academic tutoring to hundreds of low-income students. Raymond, a Houston lawyer, and Asch, 33, executive director of the Sunflower Country Freedom Project, determined there was a need for a centralized public service academy after noticing a post-9/11 spike in student interest in social service projects. Raymond said both he and Asch could afford to live on a teacher’s salary while in Teach For America, but that many students emerge from college with major loans. “The problem is that so many kids are priced out of doing the kind of things that are good for our country because they owe so much money by the time they are done,” Raymond said. “Our point is, why not prioritize service and make the opportunities available to everyone.” That translates into what Raymond and Asch hope would be a four-year, all-expenses-paid education, courtesy of the federal government. They estimate the annual operating budget to be about $205 million (based on calculations that the median per student expenditure at state universities is about $40,000 each year).
Parts of the curriculum would look similar to a traditional liberal arts program, with graduates earning a bachelor of arts or bachelor of science degree. There are also service-oriented components to the education. Each summer, students would be enrolled in a different structured learning program (emergency response training and an armed forces internship, for instance). They would likely major in a traditional subject and be required to take courses in foreign languages and international relations – all in preparation for a junior year abroad. Raymond said he would like to see students choose a public service concentration – such as health care, education or law enforcement – and serve in that field after graduation. The current plan calls for the university to place graduates in jobs based on the students’ areas of interest and on regional employment needs. Read more.
Read more about the proposal to create a National Service Academy.
